My plan for this dish evolved a bit. Initially I was thinking of just making a pumpkin bread and somehow infusing it with bourbon, and having it accompany some eggnog ice cream. I had this idea that I should be able to pour some eggnog into an ice cream maker, and end up with eggnog ice cream. I didn’t get to test that theory, though, because our Kitchenaid ice cream maker wasn’t cold enough to actually freeze anything.
I decided instead to incorporate egg nog in the pumpkin bread itself. I used a recipe from my old Joy of Cooking book and made a few minor adjustments:
- Reduced the amount of ground cinnamon by 1/4 teaspoon and added 1/4 teaspoon of freshly grated nutmeg
- Used ground allspice instead of ground cloves
- Substituted 1/3 cup of eggnog for the 1/3 cup of water or milk called for in the recipe
- Reduced the sugar by 1/3 cup
The recipe was for a 9″ x 5″ loaf pan, but 10″ x 5″ was the closest I had. It worked fine, though the loaf ended up a little shorter than intended. I baked the bread for an hour, as called for in the recipe. It turned out a little dry, so in the future I would decrease the baking time a little.
After the baked bread had cooled for a while, I poked a bunch of holes in the top with a bamboo skewer and poured an orange bourbon powdered sugar glaze over the top, making sure that plenty of it made it down all those perforations.
Orange Bourbon Glaze
- 1 1/2 cups of powdered sugar
- 4 ounces of bourbon (I used Bulleit)
- 2 teaspoons of freshly squeezed orange juice
The end result was quite tasty, if a little on the sweet side. If I were to do it again, I’d reduce the amount of sugar in the pumpkin bread recipe a bit more, maybe reduce the amount of powdered sugar in the glaze a bit (or increase the bourbon), and let the glaze soak into the bread longer before serving.